We are, “we Christians”, are the biggest faith group in the world. We are still twice, Christianity is twice the size of the next religion at this point in the world and the only way that we are going to break this is not to say, “what is wrong with you secular people, why are you being so mean to us?” Christians have to recognize number one, that you are big part of the problem and number two that we can also be at the heart of the solution. Two minutes and I’m done. There are two basic ways of thinking about your self-image. One is one I’m going to call a moral-performance narrative. A moral-performance narrative says, “I’m ok, I’m a good person, I feel significant and I have worth because I’m achieving something.” So if you are a liberal person and you feel like I’m a good person because I am working for the poor and working for human rights and I’m open minded, you can’t help, in a moral performance narrative, your self-image is based your performance as a generous liberal activist person. You can’t help look down on your nose at bigots, you can’t but feel superior to bigots. On the other hand what if you were traditional, religious person and you go to church and you read your bible or you go to synagogue and read your bible or you go to the mosque and read the Koran and you're working hard to feel good and serve God, etc. Now on that case, you have to look down at your nose at people who don’t believe in your religion and they’re not being as good as you are. And maybe you’re just a secular person and you’re a hardworking decent chap. You can’t help, if you’re self-image is based on the fact that you’re a hardworking decent chap, you can’t help but look down at your nose at people who are considered lazy. But the gospel, the gospel is something different. The gospel says, Jesus Christ comes and saves you. The gospel says, you’re a sinner. The gospel says, you don’t live up to your own standards. The gospel says, there is no way you are going to live up to your own standards. The gospel says you have failed, you’re a moral failure and salvation only belongs to people who admit their they’re moral failures. And Jesus came in weakness and died on the cross. And he says salvations is only to weak people, it is only there for people who admit you’re not better than anyone else and you just need mercy. If you have a grace narrative, if you say the reason I can look myself in the mirror, the reason I know I have significance is because Jesus died for me though I am a sinner saved by grace, then you can’t feel superior to anybody. You know, I know got a Hindu neighbor in my apartment building and I think he is wrong about the trinity and I think he is wrong about many things but he probably is a better father than me, he could be a much better man, why? “Aren’t you a christian and he’s a hindu, do you think you have the truth.” Yeah, but here’s the truth! The truth is I’m a sinner and I’m saved by grace so why in the world, I’m not saved because I’m a better man. I’m saved because I’m a worse man, really. And so what happens, the grace narrative takes away the kind of superiority and removes that slippery slope that I mentioned in the very beginning, that leads from superiority to separation to caricature and to passive and active oppression. It just takes it away. Now Christians have got to admit in a great degree that we operate out of a moral-performance narrative and we don’t have to because we got the gospel. And into a great degree we do, to a great degree we do. Now let me tell you when the grace narrative has really has really ascended. You go back to the earliest days of the church, here’s the Roman Empire and they believe in pluralism. They didn’t believe in just one god, anybody had their own god, right? Open-minded. Along comes the Christians and they say, Jesus is the true God. Very, very rigid. And yet the lives of the pagans and Christians were different. The pagans looked down their nose to the poor, Christians loved the poor. The pagans were very stratified, they never mixed different classes and social strata. Christians got everybody together, races together, classes together. Pagans were extremely oppressive to women. Christians were much more open to the leadership of women and by the way you see this in Rodney Stark’s book, Rise of Christianity. Why would what looks like open-minded philosophy lead to so much oppressiveness, and what over here the Christian which looks like a rigid philosophy lead to so much peace-making and so much generosity. I’ll tell you why, I remember not long after 9-11 I was reading an editorial to my wife out of the Sunday morning paper that said “you know what the problem with the world is? fundamentalism. If you are fundamentalist, it’s going to lead to violence.” And of course as I tried to show you we are all fundamentalists actually. But my wife sat there and she says, “that’s ridiculous, that depends on what the fundamental is!” She says, “have you ever seen an Amish terrorist?” She says, “if Amish aren’t fundamentalists, there ain’t no such thing.” But here’s what the fundamental is, a man dying on the cross for his enemies. A man praying for the forgiveness of his enemies as he is dying. If that’s at the very center of your life, that destroys the slippery slope. If Christians are willing to say, “we are going to start, we are going to start.” And we start acting that way, you know Martin Luther King Jr., when he saw racism in the south, and he looked at all those white people church goers, what did he say to them? He says, “You know, you guys are too religious. You guys are too conservative, you guys read your bible, you know we got to get more relativistic and things will get better in the south”, is that what he said? No, what did he say? “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” It’s the book of Amos. He didn’t say, “get less religious”, he said get true to the religion you got! You don’t need less Christianity, you need real Christianity. That’s what I’m saying to you.
We are, “we Christians”, are the biggest faith group in the world. We are still twice, Christianity is twice the size of the next religion at this point in the world and the only way that we are going to break this is not to say, “what is wrong with you secular people, why are you being so mean to us?” Christians have to recognize number one, that you are big part of the problem and number two that we can also be at the heart of the solution. Two minutes and I’m done. There are two basic ways of thinking about your self-image. One is one I’m going to call a moral-performance narrative. A moral-performance narrative says, “I’m ok, I’m a good person, I feel significant and I have worth because I’m achieving something.” So if you are a liberal person and you feel like I’m a good person because I am working for the poor and working for human rights and I’m open minded, you can’t help, in a moral performance narrative, your self-image is based your performance as a generous liberal activist person. You can’t help look down on your nose at bigots, you can’t but feel superior to bigots. On the other hand what if you were traditional, religious person and you go to church and you read your bible or you go to synagogue and read your bible or you go to the mosque and read the Koran and you're working hard to feel good and serve God, etc. Now on that case, you have to look down at your nose at people who don’t believe in your religion and they’re not being as good as you are. And maybe you’re just a secular person and you’re a hardworking decent chap. You can’t help, if you’re self-image is based on the fact that you’re a hardworking decent chap, you can’t help but look down at your nose at people who are considered lazy. But the gospel, the gospel is something different. The gospel says, Jesus Christ comes and saves you. The gospel says, you’re a sinner. The gospel says, you don’t live up to your own standards. The gospel says, there is no way you are going to live up to your own standards. The gospel says you have failed, you’re a moral failure and salvation only belongs to people who admit their they’re moral failures. And Jesus came in weakness and died on the cross. And he says salvations is only to weak people, it is only there for people who admit you’re not better than anyone else and you just need mercy. If you have a grace narrative, if you say the reason I can look myself in the mirror, the reason I know I have significance is because Jesus died for me though I am a sinner saved by grace, then you can’t feel superior to anybody. You know, I know got a Hindu neighbor in my apartment building and I think he is wrong about the trinity and I think he is wrong about many things but he probably is a better father than me, he could be a much better man, why? “Aren’t you a christian and he’s a hindu, do you think you have the truth.” Yeah, but here’s the truth! The truth is I’m a sinner and I’m saved by grace so why in the world, I’m not saved because I’m a better man. I’m saved because I’m a worse man, really. And so what happens, the grace narrative takes away the kind of superiority and removes that slippery slope that I mentioned in the very beginning, that leads from superiority to separation to caricature and to passive and active oppression. It just takes it away. Now Christians have got to admit in a great degree that we operate out of a moral-performance narrative and we don’t have to because we got the gospel. And into a great degree we do, to a great degree we do. Now let me tell you when the grace narrative has really has really ascended. You go back to the earliest days of the church, here’s the Roman Empire and they believe in pluralism. They didn’t believe in just one god, anybody had their own god, right? Open-minded. Along comes the Christians and they say, Jesus is the true God. Very, very rigid. And yet the lives of the pagans and Christians were different. The pagans looked down their nose to the poor, Christians loved the poor. The pagans were very stratified, they never mixed different classes and social strata. Christians got everybody together, races together, classes together. Pagans were extremely oppressive to women. Christians were much more open to the leadership of women and by the way you see this in Rodney Stark’s book, Rise of Christianity. Why would what looks like open-minded philosophy lead to so much oppressiveness, and what over here the Christian which looks like a rigid philosophy lead to so much peace-making and so much generosity. I’ll tell you why, I remember not long after 9-11 I was reading an editorial to my wife out of the Sunday morning paper that said “you know what the problem with the world is? fundamentalism. If you are fundamentalist, it’s going to lead to violence.” And of course as I tried to show you we are all fundamentalists actually. But my wife sat there and she says, “that’s ridiculous, that depends on what the fundamental is!” She says, “have you ever seen an Amish terrorist?” She says, “if Amish aren’t fundamentalists, there ain’t no such thing.” But here’s what the fundamental is, a man dying on the cross for his enemies. A man praying for the forgiveness of his enemies as he is dying. If that’s at the very center of your life, that destroys the slippery slope. If Christians are willing to say, “we are going to start, we are going to start.” And we start acting that way, you know Martin Luther King Jr., when he saw racism in the south, and he looked at all those white people church goers, what did he say to them? He says, “You know, you guys are too religious. You guys are too conservative, you guys read your bible, you know we got to get more relativistic and things will get better in the south”, is that what he said? No, what did he say? “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” It’s the book of Amos. He didn’t say, “get less religious”, he said get true to the religion you got! You don’t need less Christianity, you need real Christianity. That’s what I’m saying to you.
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